

Aside from that its a modern OS with a modern feature set. Memory compression was mentioned earlier which we as Apple users saw its wide spread whole system adoptions before most Linux users* and a couple years before Microsoft implemented it a similar manor into Windows.Īs far as the OS usage itself the kernel uses the same amount as my Linux machine (Linux kernel 4.10 in Ubuntu Gnome 17.04). They seem to keep an up with it for the most part. Never has it completely failed with its ability to reallocate resources. Without my intervention I've seen it purge terminated processes that persist (memory leak) when the demand arises without purging an innocent program (at least that I've noticed).

I find MacOS memory management itself to be pretty good. With less RAM the memory management is forced to purge the cache more often and when you call on that task again its forced to load from the HDD/SSD and regardless of which its slower than RAM. Its actually a good thing you see more RAM being used because that means the system can utilize it, there is the potential for performance gains and you didn't waste your money.

Things can remain cached longer when you have more RAM. OS X is my preferred platform, but I'm so drunk on coolaid that I can't call our when something sucks. I do agree however that, adding more RAM improves performance.Īs I said, I'm not trolling. Given Apple's current interests, I don't see that changing.Īlas, that has not been my experience unless on machines with SSDs which can cache faster than spinning rust. Head over to Phoronix and check out the multitude of tests showing how OS X performs on the same hardware versus Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch.Īpple competes on its user experience and it's iOS ecosystem. I've used OS X since PowerPC days and it's my preferred platform. Yes, that's right, I made the mistake of lumping everything in under "Linux", but really it's semantics. HFS+ is also a major contributor to the amount of system memory needs on account of how much RAM OS X need to cache since HFS+ can only manipulate 1 file at a time. Oh, and a better file system would be nice too. I'd love to see OS X go on a diet, giving users the ability to strip back some of the bloat and return to the days of a leaner operating system Please let me know if you have any queries. If it's the same after a restart, I wouldn't say it's any cause for concern. Depending on what content you are running on the webpages, they can be quite resource intensive though as mentioned a quick restart with that option unticked should go towards isolating what the problem is. However as you identified, it is a little high if you're just using Safari at the moment. Generally speaking though, the more RAM you have, the more OS X will utilise to keep the system running smoothly, so it's not unusual for memory usage to be higher after a RAM upgrade.

In the more recent iterations of OS X, in my experience I'd recommend shutting down every few days to prevent any odd hiccups from occuring. You can verify this by opening Terminal and typing in uptime, then pressing Enter. This will prevent any background memory leaks/tasks from reoccuring and reopening.Īlso a large uptime (time since last shutdown) can compound memory usage.
#Best ram for mac mini late 2012 windows
You can try restarting your Mac with the option reopen windows when logging back in unticked.
